Power Consumption Measurements

Performance at Idle and Load:

Everything gets flipped upside down when we compare idle and peak loads. While the mid-range GeForce cards are unbeatable at idle, they require considerably more power than the other cards under full load. Later in our efficiency analysis we'll see whether they make good use of that extra power draw. The undisputed power hog in our test is a GeForce GTX 560 Ti that comes with both an eight-pin and a six-pin auxiliary power plug. We question whether this is really necessary, because even our GeForce GTX 580 doesn’t pull that wattage from the wall.

No aftermarket 6950? Those 560ti cards that are topping the benchmarks are a good $40-$60 more expensive than a stock 6950 here in Oz. I think you should have included an OC'd 6950 (like the Gigabyte) which is still $20 cheaper than those ti's to make this a bit more interesting.

Yup, considering its performance, the GTX550Ti should have replaced the GTS450 price point, which was $110. Since the GTX550Ti was included here, I would have liked to see where the cheaper HD5770/6770 would have placed, probably higher than the GTX550Ti.

Also, can you guys do a story on how some classic cards match up to modern games? Stuff like 8800GTX's and 2900XT's which used to cost an arm and leg back in the day. Would be cool to see how the fare today.

No aftermarket 6950? Those 560ti cards that are topping the benchmarks are a good $40-$60 more expensive than a stock 6950 here in Oz. I think you should have included an OC'd 6950 (like the Gigabyte) which is still $20 cheaper than those ti's to make this a bit more interesting.

Geforces dominate benchmarks because we have used 10 variants of overclocked 560Ti cards against stock clocked few Radeons (6950) here and there. And also, we don't show which drivers and control panel settings we have used because that would reveal our trickery. Why is Tom always hating AMD/ATI?

There even seems not to be performance per $ which is ridiculous. Of course super clocked variants cost more than reference models. I'm sure Radeons have better performance per dollar. That's something "Igor" didn't want us to see.

This whole review is bs. Where are the OC 6950's? Did you really think that you could pass this review off as an unbiased review? If we can't trust this review, it makes the whole website suspect (except for the awesome forum people)

How can this author say, "from their top-end (AMD Radeon HD 6970, Nvidia GeForce GTX 570)?" I'm pretty sure that the GTX 580 is the top of the line. If it isn't, then what is it considered? Just because it doesn't have an AMD equivalent doesn't make it something exclusive.

Seems to be a lot of unhappy ATI users reading this but I don't know why. Look at best graphics cards for the money and ATI really dominates in a lot of categories. Bottom line I got from this article is how oversaturated the market is with choice.Use the car analogy, there are a lot of different mid priced cars and they all do a job but some are more comfortable, some more reliable, some quicker and some have more bells and whistles. Which is best comes down to what you want and maybe you just want that Ferrari that will kill them all but costs a packet.